Consciousness and sleep week 9

Question 1

conscious experience

Answer 1

The first-person perspective of a mental event, such as feeling some sensory input, a memory, an idea, an emotion, a mood, or a continuous temporal sequence of happenings.

Question 2

awareness

Answer 2

A conscious experience or the capability of having conscious experiences, which is distinct from self-awareness, the conscious understanding of one’s own existence and individuality.

Question 3

first person perspective

Answer 3

Observations made by individuals about their own conscious experiences, also known as introspection or a subjective point of view. Phenomenology refers to the description and investigation of such observations.

Question 4

contemplative science

Answer 4

A research area concerned with understanding how contemplative practices such as meditation can affect individuals, including changes in their behavior, their emotional reactivity, their cognitive abilities, and their brains. Contemplative science also seeks insights into conscious experience that can be gained from first-person observations by individuals who have gained extraordinary expertise in introspection.

Question 5

Rene Descartes’ position, dualism

Answer 5

mental and physical are, in essence, different substances.

Question 6

termed cortical blindness

Answer 6

damage limited to primary visual cortex who claims not to see anything

Question 7

information Integration Theory of Consciousness Tononi 2004

Answer 7

shared information itself constitutes consciousness

Question 8

episodic recollection

Answer 8

allows one to reexperience the past, to virtually relive an earlier event.

Question 9

declarative memory

Answer 9

ability to consciously remember

Question 10

perceptual priming

Answer 10

type of memory that does not entail the conscious experience of remembering

Question 11

hippocampus

Answer 11

storing memories for the events we experience each day
- memory, learning, emotion

Question 12

body awareness
+ region of brain

Answer 12

registering coincident sensations
temporoparietal junction

Question 13

Social Neuroscience Theory of Consciousness (Graziano & Kastner, 2011)

Answer 13

important role to our ability to localize our own sense of self.

Question 14

We make decisions in two distinct ways.

Answer 14

1. carefully analyze and weigh different factors to reach a decision, taking full advantage of the brain’s conscious mode of information processing.
2. gut decision, trusting the unconscious mode of information processing (although it still depends on the brain).

Question 15

third person perspective

Answer 15

Observations made by individuals in a way that can be independently confirmed by other individuals so as to lead to general, objective understanding. With respect to consciousness, third-person perspectives make use of behavioral and neural measures related to conscious experiences.

Question 16

A person with ______ blindness might report that they cannot see anything even though the structures of their eyes are undamaged and work perfectly.

Answer 16

cortical

Question 17

A peculiar condition called ______ is demonstrated when a person can analyze and respond to visual events even though they have no conscious awareness of having seen the stimuli.

Answer 17

blindsight

Question 18

Understand scientific approaches to comprehending consciousness.

Be familiar with evidence about human vision, memory, body awareness, and decision making relevant to the study of consciousness.

Appreciate some contemporary theories about consciousness.

Question 19

consciousness

Answer 19

Awareness of ourselves and our environment.

Question 20

“subconscious” (Freud, 2001)

Answer 20

some of our memories and even our basic motivations are not always accessible to our conscious minds.

Question 21

the cocktail party effect

Answer 21

the phenomenon wherein the brain focuses a person’s attention on a particular stimulus, usually auditory.
(your name)

Question 22

cues

Answer 22

a stimulus that has a particular significance to the perceiver (e.g., a sight or a sound that has special relevance to the person who saw or heard it)

Question 23

priming

Answer 23

the activation of certain thoughts or feelings that make them easier to think of and act upon
- “activating” certain concepts and associations from one’s memory

Question 24

Implicit Associations Test (IAT)

Answer 24

A computer reaction time test that measures a person’s automatic associations with concepts. For instance, the IAT could be used to measure how quickly a person makes positive or negative evaluations of members of various ethnic groups.

Question 25

mindfulness

Answer 25

A process that reflects a nonjudgmental, yet attentive, mental state.

Question 26

Flexible Correction Model
(Wegener & Petty, 1997)

Answer 26

the ability for people to correct or change their beliefs and evaluations if they believe these judgments have been biased (e.g., if someone realizes they only thought their day was great because it was sunny, they may revise their evaluation of the day to account for this “biasing” influence of the weather)

Question 27

Hypnosis

Answer 27

the state of consciousness whereby a person is highly responsive to the suggestions of another; this state usually involves a dissociation with one’s environment and an intense focus on a single stimulus, which is usually accompanied by a sense of relaxation

Question 28

Dissociation

Answer 28

the heightened focus on one stimulus or thought such that many other things around you are ignored; a disconnect between one’s awareness of their environment and the one object the person is focusing on

Question 29

hypnotherapy

Answer 29

the use of hypnotic techniques such as relaxation and suggestion to help engineer desirable change such as lower pain or quitting smoking.

Question 30

trance state

Answer 30

Trance: a state of consciousness characterized by the experience of “out-of-body possession,” or an acute dissociation between one’s self and the current, physical environment surrounding them.

Question 31

melatonin

Answer 31

A hormone associated with increased drowsiness and sleep.

Question 32

Circadian Rhythm

Answer 32

The physiological sleep-wake cycle. It is influenced by exposure to sunlight as well as daily schedule and activity. Biologically, it includes changes in body temperature, blood pressure and blood sugar.

Question 33

jet lag

Answer 33

The state of being fatigued and/or having difficulty adjusting to a new time zone after traveling a long distance (across multiple time zones).

Question 34

betawaves

Answer 34

awake through out day
- high in frequency but low in intensity

Question 35

alphawaves

Answer 35

falling asleep
- less frequent, more consistent and more intense

Question 36

4 stages of sleep after awake

Answer 36

Stage 1 (called NREM 1, or N1) is the “falling asleep” stage and is marked by theta waves.

Stage 2 (called NREM 2, or N2) is considered a light sleep. Here, there are occasional “sleep spindles,” or very high intensity brain waves. These are thought to be associated with the processing of memories. NREM 2 makes up about 55% of all sleep.

Stage 3 (called NREM 3, or N3) makes up between 20-25% of all sleep and is marked by greater muscle relaxation and the appearance of delta waves.

Stage 4, REM sleep is marked by rapid eye movement (REM). Interestingly, this stage—in terms of brain activity—is similar to wakefulness. That is, the brain waves occur less intensely than in other stages of sleep. REM sleep accounts for about 20% of all sleep and is associated with dreaming.

Question 37

April 16, 1943, Albert Hoffman

Answer 37

the Swiss man that was trippin’
- hallucinogen

Question 38

Hallucinogens

Answer 38

substances that, when ingested, alter a person’s perceptions, often by creating hallucinations that are not real or distorting their perceptions of time.

Question 39

euphoria

Answer 39

an intense feeling of pleasure, excitement or happiness

Question 40

depressants

Answer 40

a class of drugs that slow down the body’s physiological and mental processes.

Question 41

Blood Alcohol Content (BAC)

Answer 41

a measure of the percentage of alcohol found in a person’s blood. This measure is typically the standard used to determine the extent to which a person is intoxicated, as in the case of being too impaired to drive a vehicle.
0.3 to 0.4% there is a serious risk of death.

Question 42

three problems with alcohol depressant

Answer 42

• toxic, risk death
• lack of judgment and physical control (risk taking behaviour)
• addictive (hinders work and social life)

Question 43

opiates (also called “narcotics”)

Answer 43

another type of depressant for pain relief

Question 44

stimulants

Answer 44

a class of drugs that speed up the body’s physiological and mental processes
- caffeine, smoking

Question 45

Stimulants are highly addictive because ______.

Answer 45

as their effects wear off the brain craves the buildup of dopamine

Question 46

Define consciousness and distinguish between high and low conscious states

Explain the relationship between consciousness and bias

Understand the difference between popular portrayals of hypnosis and how it is currently used therapeutically